The Flash: Season 3 Episode 3 review – Magenta

This week we got our first real look at Violett Beane in action as Jesse Quick, as well as insight into Dr. Alchemy’s new underling, Magenta. We discuss the above and more, in our spoiler-heavy review of last night’s episode.

Three episodes in and the show has begun to lapse back into its villain of the week format. This week that came in the form of Magenta. In the comics Magenta – once the girlfriend of Wally West – was a former heroine and part of the Teen Titans, who then turned into a villain and later joined The New Rogues (next week’s episode is titled The New Rogues and will tackle this group of villains). While we love it when the show pulls great unknown (to non-hardcore DC fans) characters like Magenta out of the woodwork, we’d rather they stuck a little closer to the source material when doing so.

The fact that Magenta was part of the Teen Titans shows that she’s young, but in the show they really made her out to appear like a little girl (she’s portrayed as a victim of bad foster homes, for one), rather than as an older teen, or preferably as a young adult (like how CBS aged Supergirl up for the show). Where in images like below she looks powerful and impressive in her costume, all we got on the show was a little girl running around with purple eyes and dyed hair.

Magenta in full costumer in the comics.

Barry convincing Frankie (Magenta) to give up her plight at the end of the episode also indicates that she probably won’t be a character who sticks around (unless Dr. Alchemy sways her back again), which means that the opportunity to place her in the costume is lost entirely. Then again next week’s episode is titled The New Rogues, which is a group that Magenta did join at one point in the comics (under the leadership of Blacksmith, however, not Mirror Master), so who knows. To be clear, our criticism here isn’t of Joey King (the actress behind Magenta) – only of the casting and costume choices for the role, and how the show can sometimes visually dumb down classic comic book villains for the screen.

The show has teased both Wally West and Jesse Quick endlessly, and where the premier gave us our look at Wally, this week gave us our first real look at Jesse in action. Again, as adorable and perfectly adept as Violett Beane is as an actress (we’re big The Leftovers fans, which should say it all), we’re still not entirely happy with her being cast as Jesse, as it still seems a little too far removed from the comics for us (as does Wally), but as pointed out – we like Violett in general, so we’ll go with it.

This week saw Jesse show off her speedster skills (under the worried eye of her Father), which looked great, but the costume didn’t appear until late in the episode and we’re still yet to see Jesse put it on. If you want to get a look at Jesse in the costume (spoilers below) before net week, the promo does reveal this and we’ve pulled the image for you below. We’ve also placed the classic Jesse Quick comic book costume alongside it, for the sake of comparison.

Jesse Quick in full costume in the comics, alongside Jesse Quick in full costumer in the promo for next week’s episode, titled The New Rogues.

Firstly we want to point out how enormously similar the costume is to what Trajectory wore in her Season 2 episode. A simple google search for her will remind you what we mean. Secondly, it looks very close to The Flash’s costume – including holding his emblem – which is no bad thing, with them being part of the same team and working alongside one another. Overall, we mostly love the update (particularly the mask) and especially how Violett looks in the costume.

The awkward date subplot we found a little tiring and somewhat reductive of the wonderfully romantic line in the previous episode about Barry and Iris always being able to find one another (if their love defeats even the multi-verses, then surely their chemistry is naturally stronger than this). Equally, the short pre-credit scene this week was very underwhelming. Given that the previous two scenes gifted little teasers, this one showed nothing but Barry and co learning what we already knew (that Dr. Alchemy killed Edward Clariss).

Next week will hopefully prove to be a more exciting episode, with Jesse in full costume and The New Rogues causing havoc. In the comics The New Rogues that appear in the Flashpoint timeline are run by Mirror Master and if you watch the promo for next week you’ll see that’s exactly the avenue that the writers are taking, including having Barry get stuck inside a mirror, which sounds and a looks a little too silly to us, so next week could, really, go either way.